One Touch of Moondust (17 page)

The final blow for Gabrielle came when they pointedly wondered when she'd be coming home to stay. It was as if they hadn't heard a single word she'd said that morning.

Shocked and infuriated by the blatant rejection of her life with Paul, she said, “I'm not
coming home. I thought I'd made that clear this morning.”

“But, dear, you can't go on living this way,” her mother said, twisting her napkin nervously.

“What way is that, Mrs. Clayton?” Paul said.

Gabrielle heard the restrained fury in his voice and waited for the explosion. Her mother, however, hadn't been a politician's wife for thirty years for nothing.

“Paul, it's not that we don't appreciate your giving Gabrielle a place to stay,” she said, immediately reducing his status to that of Good Samaritan. “Nor is it that we think your apartment isn't lovely. You've done an interesting job of fixing it up.”

There was that word, Gabrielle thought with a groan.
Interesting.

“Actually, your daughter is responsible for the decor,” Paul replied with obvious pride. “She's becoming quite a success as a decorator.”

Her mother looked startled. Gabrielle shot a guilty look at Paul. “I hadn't told them about the business yet.”

“I see,” he said heavily.

Gabrielle heard the defeat in his voice, but had no idea how to reassure him short of turning the dinner into a family shouting match. She listened to her father's patronizing remarks and her mother's weak attempts to pacify everyone and saw Paul fighting to remain calm.

“Perhaps I'd better leave,” Paul said finally. “I'm sure you have things you'd like to discuss without an outsider present.”

“Paul,” Gabrielle protested helplessly as he grabbed his jacket and strode to the door.

“We'll talk later,” he said curtly. “Good night, Mr. and Mrs. Clayton.”

Gabrielle watched Paul go and knew the greatest fear she'd ever known, greater than losing her job, greater even than losing her family's support. And it made her blazing mad, at her parents and most of all at herself. Paul had chosen to act charitably and ignore her parents' rudeness, rather than fight back. She should have had the courage to defend not only him, but their relationship.

“How dare you?” she said, turning on her parents the minute Paul had left.

“What did we do?” her mother asked in seemingly genuine bewilderment.

“You've just spent most of the evening putting Paul down. Putting both of us down. Even after Paul mentioned our business, you weren't interested enough to ask about it. You've just confirmed for him what he's always feared, that he's not good enough for me.” She gulped back a sob. “Well, you're wrong. He is good enough. He's better than either one of you.”

Her mother gasped and her father looked more furious than she'd ever seen him.

“Young lady, you will apologize to your mother and me at once.”

“I will not. You have been unforgivably rude to a man I love.”

Her mother seemed to rally. “Darling, we certainly never meant to insult Paul.”

“Gabrielle knows that,” her father said. “The man has to understand that we're just looking out for your welfare. Now Townsend—”

“I don't want to hear one more word about Townsend,” she snapped. “You say you just want the best for me. Has it occurred to either of you yet that what I have right now might
be the best for me? Have you been paying any attention at all to what's been going on here tonight? I've never been happier. I love Paul. I hope to God he loves me enough to forgive your behavior. This is where my life is now, not in Charleston and certainly not with Townsend.”

Her father reached for her hand. Without the bolstering effect of his anger, he looked older. To her amazement he even looked a little bit afraid. “Gabrielle, honey, your mother and I just worry about you. This isn't what we envisioned for you.”

“It's not what I envisioned, either, but Paul is what's best for me. I've never been more certain of anything in my life. He's encouraged me to discover who I really am, rather than to rebel against what I don't want to be.”

“What about Wall Street? You were so dead set on that once,” her father reminded her.

“Maybe it was because I knew you and mother would hate it. I saw the life you had in mind for me, married to Townsend, spending my days doing dull, boring, predictable things and I reached out for the one thing that I knew was more exciting. I always envied you going
off to work every day, while mother had to stay at home.”

“But I love being at home,” her mother protested.

“I know you do,” Gabrielle said more gently. “And I guess that's what we all need to realize. Each of us is entitled to make our own happiness, whatever it is. Mine is with Paul, with this new business of ours.”

“You really are sure about this, pet?” her father said, squeezing her hand. He searched her eyes for an answer.

“I really am.”

“Then I suppose that will have to be good enough for me. We'll wait with you until Paul comes back. We'll explain that we were wrong.”

One thing about her father, when he'd been convinced of something, he gave it his full-fledged support. She got up and kissed him. “Thank you, Daddy, but no. I think we'd better be alone. I'll call you in the morning. Maybe we can get together again before you leave.”

“I'd like that,” her father said. “I'd like to
get to know this man you love. He must be something for you to care this much.”

“He is, Daddy. He's pretty special.”

Her parents left then amid more apologies and promises to be available for any plans she and Paul wanted to make with them.

Left unspoken was Gabrielle's greatest fear: that the apologies might be too late, that Paul might not come back to her at all.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

W
hen Paul left the apartment, he walked aimlessly for a while, then got into his car. His stomach was in knots. He couldn't think straight. Only once before in his life had he felt this lost and defeated and furious. Not since he and Christine Bentley Hanford had stood under a starry sky, and she'd stared at him in astonishment as she laughed at his proposal. He had felt like such a fool. In all these years since that humiliating night, he had never felt such gut-wrenching inadequacy. He had
avoided any situation, any person likely to put him at such a disadvantage again.

Until Gabrielle. Until this beautiful, vulnerable woman had come along and convinced him that what they had together could survive anything. But not this, he thought angrily. Gabrielle's parents had dismissed him as casually as they might a servant. Worse, he had tolerated it, which didn't say much for his character or for his sense of self-worth. How would Gabrielle ever respect him after this?

Without realizing where he was headed, he found himself on his way to Long Island. Maybe there were answers to be found in the past. Maybe he needed to link these two failures in his mind in order to walk away from Gabrielle with his dignity intact.

One thing he knew for certain after tonight: he had to walk away. He would not allow her to be subjected to the kind of pressure her parents had exerted tonight. It wasn't fair to expect her to give up so much for a life with him. She ought to go back to Townsend and all the advantages she could have in Charleston.

He turned into the gate of the Hanford estate and drove to his parents' cottage without once
looking in the direction of the main house. The cottage lights were still on, which meant his mother was probably up knitting while his father slept in an easy chair, a book open on his chest. He glanced in a window at the familiar scene and smiled. It gave him an odd sense of continuity.

He tapped on the door and heard his father's startled, “What's that?”

“I'll get it, John. Put your shoes on.” His mother opened the door a crack and peeked out. “Paul!”

Her round, wrinkled face lit with pleasure and she enfolded him in plump arms. She smelled of talcum powder and a vague hint of cinnamon. She'd probably baked a coffee cake for the Hanfords' breakfast, he thought, recalling how Christine had loved it. As a child she'd often stolen a portion from the breakfast table for him, then they'd shared it as they sat side by side in the tree house his father had built for them in a giant oak.

His father was on his feet now, moving more slowly than he'd remembered. Years of kneeling on cold, damp ground had made his
knees stiff. “Boy, what brings you out here at this hour on a weeknight? Everything okay?” “Give him a minute to settle down,” his mother chided. “Come into the kitchen. I've just baked a coffee cake. We'll have that and I'll make a fresh pot of coffee.”

“What will the Hanfords do in the morning, if we eat their breakfast?” Paul asked.

“They'll get oatmeal. It's better for Mr. Hanford anyway,” she said, giving him a conspiratorial grin.

Within minutes they were settled around the kitchen table as they had been a thousand times in the past. It was where family decisions were always made, amid good food and gentle love.

“Work going okay?” his father asked, probing carefully.

“Fine, Pop. I have more business than I can handle.” He hesitated, then added, “I'm working with someone now.”

“Oh?”

He began, then, to tell them about Gabrielle and Second Chances, about the jobs they'd done, about her talent and enthusiasm.

“She's more than a business partner, isn't
she?” his mother asked with her incredible perceptiveness. “You're in love with her.”

He grinned ruefully. “It's that plain?”

“It is to me. You don't come home talking about casual friends with that special gleam in your eyes. You haven't looked that way since…” She broke off uneasily.

“Since Christine. You can say it, Ma.”

“You're better off without her. Surely you see that, son,” his father said. “She'd have brought you nothing but misery. She was spoiled rotten by her daddy. Maybe that wasn't her fault, but it turned her into a user. She took from you without paying no mind to your feelings. She deserves that empty, cold marriage she's found herself in.”

It was not the first time Paul had heard references to Christine's unhappiness, but he found that at last it meant nothing. He simply felt sorry for her, as he would for anyone trapped in an impossible situation of their own making.

“Are you going to marry this Gabrielle?” his mother asked.

“I don't think so, Ma. She's…she's a lot like Christine.”

His mother gasped softly and frowned. His father looked just as worried. “Now, son, you're too old to be needing advice from me, but I've got to warn you—”

He held up his hand. “It's okay. You don't need to say it. I met her parents tonight and I think I finally realized why it wouldn't work. She'd be caught between us.”

His mother stirred her coffee, her expression thoughtful. “Does that mean you think she's in love with you?”

“She says she is.”

“But you said…”

“When I said she was like Christine, I didn't mean she was selfish. I just meant that she comes from the same kind of privileged background. Her father's Senator Graham Clayton, for God's sake. He could hand her the world on a platter.”

His parents exchanged another worried glance. “But she's satisfied with what you can give her?” his mother asked quietly.

“She claims she is, but
I
can see it's not enough. She deserves all those things she can have if she goes back to South Carolina. Until tonight I'd been able to ignore the fact that I
was denying her things that should rightfully be hers.”

“If you walk out of her life, do you honestly think that's what she'll do? Will she go home?”

He stared at his mother and thought of Gabrielle's determination to make her own way, her absolute refusal to consider going back or even accepting help from home. It was a perspective he hadn't considered. “No. I don't suppose she would.”

“Is she smart?”

He grinned at that. “A hell of a lot smarter than I am at times.”

“Then she wouldn't do something dumb like staying with you, if she thought it was wrong for her, now would she?”

He laughed and suddenly the doubts began to dissipate. “I don't suppose she would.”

“And she's smart enough to recognize a decent, caring man?”

He stood up, pulled his mother from her chair and swung her around. “Thanks, Ma.”

He bent down and gave his father a kiss that left a startled but pleased look on his face. “If
this works out, I want you to come to dinner with us on Sunday.”

“No ifs. It will work out. You bring her here,” his mother countered. “I'll make pot roast.”

“No. I want you to sit back and enjoy a meal for a change. Besides, you haven't seen the apartment since we fixed it up.” He grinned at his father. “And I think Gabrielle would love your ideas for the garden. It seems she aspires to a green thumb. She's got bulbs scattered all over the place and can't decide where to plant them. If we don't get them in the ground soon, I'm liable to cook them for dinner one night by mistake.”

“If you want to make us really happy on Sunday, you'll announce your engagement. I'm ready for some grandbabies to take care of.”

“I'll do my best, Ma.”

He drove home with a silly, expectant grin on his face. He and Gabrielle were going to work this out. He would do his best to win over her parents, but he wasn't marrying them.

Marrying?

Well, hell, wasn't that what this was all
about? He'd been half-crazy in love with the woman from the first minute she'd appeared on his doorstep with her fox coat, stubborn chin and vulnerable eyes. He admired her strength and honesty. He thrilled to her sharp wit. And he cherished her gentleness. The images that flashed through his mind now weren't of a sophisticated, stylishly dressed woman, but of Gabrielle with paint on the tips of her eyelashes, hands that smelled of turpentine and a smile that grew at the sight of him. Yes, marrying was definitely what this was all about. He was whistling when he went up the stairs at 2:00 a.m., the future as clear to him and as filled with promise as it could possibly be.